A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk magazine, particularly to a disk magazine for accessing Compact Disks protected from the particle contamination and environmental vibration during the manufacturing process of Compact Disks.
B. Description of the Related Art
In the conventional manufacturing process of Compact Disks like CD-ROM, DVD, and so on, there is no need for a sealed container for transporting between processes. A specially designed disk magazine is unnecessary for manufacturing the normal-density Compact Disk (hereafter referred to as CD) in different processes because the tolerance to particle contamination is not so critical, but it is not the case as the high density, mega speed, and mini-sized CD tends to be the future product. The particle contamination during the conveying of CDs in processes becomes a key issue for the yield improvement, and the inevitable vibration due to transportation between the front-end and back-end manufacturing modules can also cause damage of CDs. Besides, a conventional packing procedure of the processed CDs for the transportation between the front-end and back-end processes is unnecessary by using a specific disk magazine, thereby realizing large cost down.
As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional magazine 10 for accessing disk-like information media generally includes a stack container 32, a lifting mechanism 35, and a gripping mechanism 34. The stack container 32 usually includes a vertical shaft 322 which passes through the openings of stacked CDs; the stacked CDs are lifted up by the lifting mechanism 35 to a certain position of the stack container 32, then a topmost CD is displaced in a horizontal direction against the shaft 322 by a displacement means 33 such that the CD is removed by the gripping mechanism 34 for the following processing. In addition, a sensor mechanism 36 is disposed in the upper part of the magazine 10 for detecting that a topmost CD on the stack container 32 has been lifted by the lifting mechanism 35 to a removal position.
However, this kind of the conventional disk magazine is not specially designed for the production in a high-level clean room because of its poor isolation from the outer environment in view of the particle contamination. Besides, the conventional magazine is very complex in the sense that the whole magazine structure includes at least the stack container, the lifting mechanism and the gripping mechanism as a whole, thus such relatively complicated structure causes operation and maintenance problems which increase the manufacturing cost.
One of the objects of the invention is to provide a disk magazine for accessing CDs during manufacturing processes of CDs. The disk magazine includes a bottom stage, a vertical shaft fixed and supported at the bottom stage, a prop-up piece being arranged above the bottom stage and having an opening through which the vertical shaft extends, a barrel tightly combined with the bottom stage at the lower end, and a lid tightly covering up the upper side of the bottom stage.
According to the invention, the lid is preferably provided with a fixing hole into which the vertical shaft is inserted so that the vertical shaft is secured when the lid is combined with the barrel. Besides, two O-rings are used for sealing between the lid and the barrel, as well as between the bottom stage and the barrel respectively to prevent the disk magazine from the environmental contamination.
The CDs stored in such disk magazine are protected from particle contamination and vibrational damage during transportation of processing, and the disk magazine compared with the conventional magazine has the advantages of low cost and portability.